Benjamin

Im putting together a live show and want to be able to trigger video clips in time with a rhythm.

I have lots of tracks playing in ableton and i want to be able to trigger clips in time and then have then looping round, just as if i were playing audio.

I ventured into this murky swamp before and got chewed up and spat out. It was too stressful so i decided to focus on the music for my live show and when that was sorted, work on the video. . .

There was absolutely nothing out there that gave me good midi control of video clips that would trigger like audio.

I tried Arkaos and some edirol gear and they were all too slow. As i hit a key, the video clips wouldnt play instantly or as near to instant as possible. If im playing along to audio then the clips need to be in time.

I have lots of musical clips that ive cut from things like the clangers and father ted and i will be triggering between them quite fast. . . in the past NOTHING has been able to cope with this.

I havent ventured into MaxMSP but my friend used to have it and showed me how to trigger clips. . . i have to say. . . it was just as bad as everything else. . .

I have a MacBook Pro Dual 2.4GHz with 4GB RAM so im almost on the top spec. . .

Any ideas or help would be much appreciated.

video-clip-midi-triggering

Will you be triggering via MIDI from Abelton? You'd need to get the communication between it and Max going, can be done via [rewire~] or other means. If you want manual control (timed changes based upon keys, MIDI notes, or automated means) you can do it directly with Max/Jitter, a million different ways. Hopefully you didn't get turned off by the demo of Max by your friend, it really is very straightforward to do this or any other kind of triggering/playback of media files, including using Max for your sound clips too (though you may be set on Abelton, which does provide a great interface for clip manipulation right off the bat).

I've gotten best results with quick video-clip triggering by using a long video and jumping to different points, rather than loading in new (even short) clips each time, as there's a *bit* of a delay when loading. This may have been the problem with the other hardware/software too... no matter how sophisticated they may be, reading the files can only happen so fast, unless there's some kind of pre-loading buffer built in. So if you can assemble the clips you want into a main master file, you read that in first, then trigger jumps from point to point. Works very smoothly and quickly and can definitely keep up with fast switching.

Give Jitter a go and you'll see that there are a ton more options for this kind of stuff, so you can experiment beyond just triggering normal playback. All kinds of tweaks are possible with your clips, just like for sound loops in Abelton.

This is a little off topic, but you might want to download the demo of VDMX, www.vidvox.net. Seems a lot of people are using this software in conjunction with Live. 

This is a little off topic, but you might want to download the demo of VDMX, www.vidvox.net.  Seems a lot of people are using this software in conjunction with Live.  
Good luck.
S.


Video Clip MIDI triggering